1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, it has been difficult to handle two-dimensional graphics data and three-dimensional graphics data simultaneously on a single apparatus. As a solution to this issue, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-353495 discusses a technology that enables simultaneous handling of both two-dimensional graphics data and three-dimensional graphics data on one apparatus.
However, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-353495, the apparatus only discriminates between an instruction to process two-dimensional graphics data and an instruction to process three-dimensional graphics data, and switches the rendering processing functions between the two types of data according to a discrimination result. For this reason, in the technology discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-353495, an apparatus, which has a rendering processing function for three-dimensional graphics data but does not have a rendering processing function for two-dimensional graphics data, is unable to process two-dimensional graphics data.
When provided with a hardware rendering processing function to render three-dimensional graphics data, the apparatus is certainly provided with a more elaborate accelerator capable of high-speed rendering than in apparatuses which include a hardware rendering processing function to render two-dimensional graphics data.
There are differences between gradation in two-dimensional graphics and gradation in three-dimensional graphics, including a difference in color designation method, thus making simple cross-dimensional mapping difficult.